In the Name Of
by Yami no Kokoro
Summary: Oneshot. Post DH.  Harry and Ginny try to think of a name for their second child, and Harry receives an unusual gift that brings up very old memories.


A/N: I just finished the Deathly Hallows. If you haven't what are you doing reading HP fanfiction:P Anyway, I love Snape, and I love that Harry thought to name his son (sort of) after him. And so this just sort of... came out. Please review!

**In the Name of…**

By Yami no Kokoro

"If it's a girl?" Ginny shot Harry a knowing smile, certain even before she had spoken of what he would suggest.

Sure enough, he didn't pause for a second before replying, "Lily." Then, seeing his wife's grin, he added quickly, "Unless you have a different suggestion. After all, I did sort of monopolize the naming of our little James Sirius Potter, didn't I?"

Ginny patted her bulging middle, feeling the six month old baby kicking eagerly inside of her, and replied serenely, "You know that I wanted those names just as much as you did, Harry. It wouldn't be fair not to honor the people so important to you, would it? And besides, I can't think of a prettier name for a little girl than Lily."

"Oh, I don't know," Harry replied, leaning forward to peck his wife on the lips. "We could always name her Ginny the second."

"Tempting…" She rolled her eyes, but beneath it she was beaming.

Several days ago, while sorting through some old boxes delivered from the various Weasley houses to the new Potter home, Harry had rediscovered an old self-help book that he had been given years ago and never found time to read. He had been skeptical at first, of anything proclaiming that it possessed sure-fire secrets to win any witch's heart, but applying some of the book's techniques (spontaneous shows of affection and a showering of compliments, for example) had actually proven to be quite useful in keeping Ginny's moods from swinging as violently as they had during their first pregnancy, when she had been known to hex her husband often for crimes such as "speaking too loudly" or "smiling funny."

Harry stepped away from his wife and moved to another large brown box on the floor. Though he and Ginny had been married for nearly three years, they had only now agreed that it was safe enough to get a home of their own. Voldemort had been gone for over half a decade, true, but every once in a while a crazed Death Eater would still pop out of the woodwork, believing that killing Harry would somehow manage to bring him back. The attacks had grown less and less common as time passed, however, and when Ginny had learned that she was pregnant with her second child the pair had realized that it was more than time to leave the Burrow and strike out on their own.

As Harry leaned over the box, sighing heavily- would the endless stream of nick-nacks never end?- he suggested, "Lily could be her middle name, and her first name could be for someone from your side of the family."

Ginny laughed from where she sat on the plush couch, sorting laundry.

"And who would I name her after, then? Old Auntie Muriel?" She shook her head. "Her name will be Lily and that's that."

"Alright," Harry consented, and couldn't help feeling unreasonably pleased. His son and daughter, to be named after his mother and father… then his brows furrowed, and as he cut open the Spellotape on the box he suggested softly, "But if it's a boy… if it's a boy we should name it Fred." He was certain that this was the right decision, and even more so after he had spoken it aloud. He was therefore quite surprised when Ginny gasped and retorted with a quick and decisive "No."

He looked up at her, brows furrowing, and found her staring wistfully out the nearest window. He considered leaving her to her thoughts, but couldn't help uttering the question racing through his mind.

"Why not?"

Ginny turned to him, smiling sadly, and replied in a very matter of fact way, "George gets that name, Harry." And as she spoke it, he knew that he should have realized it too. For a moment they sat in silence, before Harry turned his attention back to prying open the box and ventured, "So… if it's a boy?"

"I'm not sure." Ginny paused, considering. Many brave men had been lost over the years, during the war and the aftermath of Voldemort's brief but terrible reign: Alastor Moody- a great Auror and member of the Order of the Phoenix, who had died while leading Harry to safety from Voldemort's Death Eaters eight years before; Remus Lupin- a good friend to both Harry and his parents, who had fought long and hard to dislodge Voldemort from power, and had died valiantly in battle less than an hour before his fall…

Ginny considered the name Remus and rather liked it, but again she wasn't sure that it was quite hers to take. Little Teddy Lupin was only eight years old and at no age to be thinking about children, but she suspected that- like Harry- he might one day wish to name his son after his heroic father.

After nearly a minute of silent consideration, Ginny's face broke into a smile. She knew without a doubt that she had come up with a name that her husband would truly appreciate.

"Harry, how about Albus?"

"Severus?" Harry muttered at the same moment. Ginny's brows rose.

"Severus…? You mean… as in Snape?" It simply hadn't occurred to her before, possibly because she had been so used to thinking of him as "Snape" that she'd quite nearly forgotten he'd had a first name at all, and possibly because she had spent so many of her early years, as Harry had, despising the man, that he didn't come quickly to mind as someone to honor.

Still, if Harry was willing to suggest the name then she had to consider its merit…

Harry, meanwhile, was staring down into open the cardboard box, which, it seemed, had come from Petunia Dursley. Harry had neither spoken to nor heard from any of the Dursleys for years, except to confirm that they were still alive after Voldemort's fall. He wasn't even sure how his aunt had managed to track down this address. (He'd have to look into that- if Petunia Dursley could find him then a dark wizard certainly could.)

On a sheet of paper on the top of the box was a short paragraph, written in Petunia's unmistakable, perfect cursive.

_This has been wasting space in our attic for twenty-five years, now. We're certainly not going to keep it any longer._

Below this message was an array of notes and letters, some folded into neat envelopes and some seeming like the kind that Ron, Harry, and Hermione… well, alright, Ron and Harry, while Hermione had glowered at them… had passed during their History of Magic classes to keep from falling asleep of sheer boredom. All of them seemed, though, to be addressed to Lily Evans. There were also some pictures mixed in, taken with a Muggle camera, of Harry's mother during her teen years. A small white shoebox was squashed into the top of box, covering one whole side, and a scrawl much less tidy than Petunia's, though still clearly legible, proclaimed it, "Me and Sev."

It took Harry a moment to connect the name "Sev" to its rightful owner, but when he did an uncomfortable shiver jumped through him, making him murmur the full name aloud.

Ginny was speaking, across the room, but Harry wasn't listening. All these years a treasure trove of young Lily Evans memorabilia had been resting in the Dursleys' attic, and Harry had never been told. Throughout his childhood he had wished for one thing, just one thing, of his parents' that he could hold onto, so that he could feel in some small way that he had known them. The Dursleys had always avoided his inquiries to his parents' belongings, of course, and when Harry had become a wizard he had realized that it was because they would never have put up with any wizarding possessions in their house.

But it seemed that Petunia had found herself unable to dispose of this one box. Harry wasn't sure if he was more pleased with his aunt's small show of affection toward her sister, or angry that she had possessed these things of his mother's all along and never once mentioned it.

Harry paused for a moment, thinking to put the shoebox aside and search further down in the box, perhaps for some letters written by his father or Lily herself, but as soon as he had taken the box into his hands he knew he would have to open it. He couldn't ignore any memory of his mother, even if it were letters written by Snape. Harry had long accepted that the man had been acting in the interests of those opposing Voldemort in the time before his death, and had even come understand the respect that Albus Dumbledore had had for him.

Logically, Harry knew that, but he had never quite made the emotional jump to forgiving Snape who, best interests or not, had been at least partially responsible for the deaths of most of the parental figures in Harry's life. A small scowl darkened Harry's face as he pulled the lid off of the shoebox.

Inside there were more pictures, taken again with a Muggle camera, of two children, both perhaps eleven years old. A cheery, redheaded girl posed dramatically in front of the camera, laying her hand across her forehead like a black and white movie star for some of them, grinning or blowing kisses at the camera in others. It was clear that she was holding the camera while she posed. The boy in the pictures hung back, looking alternately sullen, surprised, and suspicious of the whole experience. At one point, though, Lily must have made some sort of joke just before snapping a picture, because the young Severus Snape, standing beside her in the frame, had turned to face her with his lips curved up and his eyes alight in a truly happy grin that Harry had never seen, or even imagined, on his old Potions master's face.

In that moment he could have been any ordinary kid enjoying a bright summer day with his friend- not a boy who was born into a family that hated Muggle-borns like the girl he was playing with; not a boy whose family ties would one day lead him to becoming a Death Eater; who, desperate to prove himself to the one cause that had ever accepted him, would eventually leak information to Voldemort that would lead to the death of the girl beside him; who would be so overcome with grief at her death that he would agree to turn spy and bring downfall to that very cause; who would work hard at making the years this girl's son spent at Hogwarts a living hell, while all the time devoting his best efforts to make sure that he lived at all.

Who would kill Dumbledore, Harry's mentor and friend.

Who would be named a traitor by all those he was working secretly to protect.

Who would be betrayed in passing by the master he pretended to support and, dying, give his last ounce of strength telling Harry how to finally and completely destroy that supposedly infallible master.

Seeing the dark and tangled futures of the children in these photos, Harry felt a sudden ache in his chest, a sharp anger that Voldemort had existed at all, and that he and his unyielding, encroaching hatred had destroyed the lives of this boy and this girl.

His mother… and the man who had loved her.

"Alright," Ginny's voice broke him from his reverie. "Severus actually is a nice name, if you think about it."

"Yeah…" Harry replied, and though he knew that Muggle pictures were frozen, the young Severus and Lily seemed suddenly to be grinning brighter than ever. "You know, it really is."

_Finis _


End file.
